Corporate Accessibility

The City of St. Catharines is dedicated to providing high quality services for our community. In doing so, we recognize the diverse needs of our community and strive to provide services and facilities that are accessible for everyone. The City promotes accessibility through the development of its policies, procedures and practices that are consistent with the core principles of integration, independence, dignity and equal opportunity for persons with disabilities.

Accessibility features of various City facilities

Refer to the left margin under the Corporate Accessibility menu to review Facility Accessibility Features of many of the City's frequently visited facilities for accessibility details to help plan your visit.

Having trouble reading our website?

Provided free to City website users is BrowseAloud. BrowseAloud adds speech and reading support tools to online content to extend the reach of our website. This includes people with dyslexia, learning difficulties, cognitive disabilities, mild visual impairments and those with English or French as a second language.

Accessible St. Catharines videos

Check out our video highlighting the accessible features of council chambers at City Hall.

Background

The City of St. Catharines has been resourcing the expertise and perspective of people with disabilities since it established an Accessibility Advisory Committee (AAC) in 1998, well before the Provincial Ontarians with Disabilities Act in 2001 mandated accessibility advisory committees.

The City of St. Catharines, like other municipalities in Ontario, prepares an Accessibility Plan to proactively address issues and plan for future accessibility to ensure equal participation for people with a disability in the life of the community. Ultimately, the Accessibility Plan is intended to identify, remove and prevent barriers that may impede residents and visitors with disabilities from accessing and using a municipal service. Accessibility planning has become embedded in the normal operating policies and procedures of the City of St. Catharines.

City facilities, new and old, continue to be built or renovated to a high level of accessibility. The guiding document used is the Facility Accessibility Design Standards (FADS). FADS was the benchmark used in an extensive access audit of various City facilities which exceeds requirements in the Ontario Building Code (OBC). The AAC also reviews City facility design and renovation plans and provides further advice.

Motivation

In 2001, the Province of Ontario introduced the Ontarians with Disabilities Act (ODA), which, among other things, mandated the public sector to create an annual accessibility plan to identify, remove or prevent barriers to its goods, facilities, programs and services. It also required that an accessibility advisory committee be created in municipalities with populations greater than 10,000.

Subsequently, in June 2005, the Province introduced the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) to benefit all Ontarians by developing, implementing and enforcing a number of accessibility standards.

Accessibility Standards have been enacted in areas such as customer service, employment, information and communication, transportation, and public / outdoor spaces. Accessibility Plans have progressed from annual plans into longer-term planning requiring annual status reports.

The AODA and its Standards mandate both the public and private sectors with an objective of an accessible Ontario by the year 2025.

For more information about the province's accessibility legislation and these standards, please visit the website links below:

Customer Service Feedback

As part of its on-going support to improve customer service, accessibility training for City of St. Catharines employees, volunteers and third party compliance continues to recognize the requirements of the AODA Customer Service Standard (Ontario Regulation 429/07). Moving forward, the City continues to improve its practices in creating accessible information and communication.

The City of St. Catharines is committed to providing accessible information and communications to all of our customers. The City recognizes that people with disabilities often use methods other than standard print to access information. It is the policy of the City to provide documents in an accessible format or provide communication supports upon request.

The City welcomes your feedback on our accessible goods, services, programs and facilities. Take our Customer Service Survey and tell us how we're doing so we can continue to provide outstanding service. Your comments will be kept confidential

Contact us in person, by mail, email, phone, fax, TTY, or contact the Accessibility Coordinator directly. This information is contained on the lower left side of this web page.